Post by Kyle Shane on Feb 11, 2019 5:18:58 GMT -5
In this trailer sits a very wounded man. A man, against all odds, who was very hurt and left wounded and bleeding by love.
Literally, mate. Still got stitches in my face from it going sour.
And I'm trying to run my lines and focus on getting this movie in the can. As I sit on my little easy chair, running over this climactic monologue and giving it my full attention, I can feel myself time slipping. It's almost like what the subject of my focus does in those stupid little student films he does in his spare time. "Promos", he calls them. I call them indulgent, overly long wankfests. But then, what do I know?
My name is Alastair Joyner and the last three weeks of my life have fallen apart.
The producers have begun getting impatient with re-shoots and funding this money as it's turned into a headache. What began life as an unexpected, prestige sports drama has started falling all to bits. And there's so many fingers pointing where to blame. The script being written by an amateur, who was getting his petty revenge against his old roommate. The directors and executive producers not being able to keep it straight in their minds if this was going to be a big, set piece summer blockbuster or a measured, studied drama tucked away in the winter months and trying to get play at festivals. And then there was the public fall from grace of it's lead actor. In today's Twitter culture spose' I'm fucked just from jump of my name being linked to me flirting with underage girls. Me too, and all that. But weirder things have happened... right?
I put the script aside, impatiently, as the wardrobe girl Jessie is fidgeting around with my tights on the counter. "Got half an hour until you're needed on set, Alastair," she says, but she doesn't look at my face, and has the nervous energy of someone who doesn't want to be there. Don't we all?
"Jessie, can I ask you a question?" I say pensively, drumming my fingers lightly on the tray table next to my easy chair.
She freezes, but does look up to me. She gives me a servant's smile. "Yes, Alastair?"
"Why are we still doing this movie?"
"I don't follow you, Alastair." She's pleasant enough, but she keeps her distance. Like I'm some kind of monster. I can't stand it. I can't stand how everyone is looking at me, looking on pins and needles about me.
"This stupid Tyler Zane movie. It was in bad taste. But every single day I'm on set, I try to wrap my head around this character, get into being this... person, and it's just making me feel more lost. Who is he? Is he a black hat or a white hat?" There's so much I want to say, but can't, because even as I'm reaching, I'm just scratching the service. It isn't just that I can't quite get the character right, it feels like I'm losing myself trying. The web of contradictions baked into this character's nature are impossible to make sense of, his motivations only seem to be what's best for him in the moment, and the more I try to be him, the more lost I become. I'm Alastair fucking Joyner. I did two series on Straya's second highest rated daytime program and I was praised for my work bringing Greg's character arc to a satisfying conclusion on series 2 of Paradise Island. I should be nailing this.
But I can't get my head around who I'm supposed to be.
Because who I'm supposed to be makes no sense. Because who I'm supposed to be is a man who pushes everyone away, who loves nothing. But... but the real Array, she was the one who pushed me out, when I was trying to keep her close. I was trying to be a better man to her than he ever was, and I... she... I don't understand.
Jessie can sense the misery on my face, and she comes around the counter. She stands, aloof and poised, but closer to me. She can feel that I need answers. "Alastair... you are a gifted person, and you have a really kind heart. But - ohhh, can I speak... freely?" I wave my hand blithely, motioning she can do whatever. "I fear that, you're trying too hard to fit into this mold of what the, um, Tyler Zane, character is supposed to be. And you're losing yourself in it."
"That's ridiculous," I snorted, and I looked at her like she had two heads, "I played an addict on series three of Paradise Island, and ya don't see me reaching for needles, do you? I know not to go bleedin' native." She pursed her lips, and didn't want to look at me again, like someone trying to avoid giving the talk. I just wanted it straight.
Gods truth was, though, what she was saying made a lick of sense, but I didn't know how I could differentiate it. I was always getting a bleedy fuckwit "Cut!" from the director, who was forever giving me his snippy little "notes" on what he thinks Tyler Zane would say better in the heat of some particular moment, say when he was spouting off three paragraphs worth of dialogue running down a wrestler's past and calling em a drongo. It made no sense to me how he could sit through marking all that drivel down, let alone who would want to listen to it.
"I just think, you know - you don't want to get so into it that it becomes... intense..." Jessie hemmed and hawed. And I, charming devil that I am, reached into my bag of calm. Ya know, flash her those big white pearlies, Allie, make her swoon at the sight of the Australian sun. Girls have always turned heads, ever since I started doing modelling shoots in catalogues. I touched her should, like a pal. To my surprise, she flinched away.
"Is that why Array left the hero, in this version of the story? 'Cause he got too... intense?" My voice was cracking, like ice, in her ear.
Jessie couldn't speak, and I felt the urge to grab her and shove her. I hated how she looked at me. It was the same way Array looked at me back in Boston. All those nights in our apartments, when it was down time between my shoots and her play rehearsals, should have been good times, should have been just me and my girl. But she said that she didn't like who I was becoming. Well, guess what. It had been this role, and trying to probe the right mindset to say these... awful words. It kindled something in me. It made me angrier. (Hey. Yes. That's always what connects me to this character. The anger. It's always there, simmering under the surface. How does he do it?) Array had looked at me, just like Jessie was looking at me now. (No, she wasn't, Array had stood up, get your set dressing right...)
"Alastair," she says, her voice tight, "Please let go of my arm, you are making me very afraid."
My inspiration is infamous for letting his demons out in these moments of indulging his darkest whims. Maybe I could... practice it. I stage the shot in my mind, walk through the rehearsal. (This scene is going to be raw and gripping, I want to see real emotion between the two of you when you hit her... and... take us there.) And rehearse my speech, not knowing where Jessie was after I left my trailer. (Why, no, as a matter of fact... haven't seen the girl... You know, isn't Jessie the one a bit on the heavy side? Maybe she's down in catering... Ha, ha, ha...)
"Alastair." Jessie says, breaking my rehearsal. "You are making me very afraid. And you are hurting me."
"Sorry, love." I give her a big, toothy grin, deciding to give the rehearsal another take. "I didn't mean it, honest."
She rubs her tricep, which has deepening marks on it, and doesn't meet my eyes. She leaves her sewing implements behind on the counter next to my tights. "Twenty minutes until bell," she mumbles, and gets out of that trailer as fast as she can.
Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to think about my next shot. Twenty minutes insight into the mind of Tyler. I just want it to be good. I want it to mean something. I want... to stop getting notes about acting more like what the director feels like I should be.
This was going to be my big break in America, God dammit. After all these Aussie imports coming to these shores and bam, getting huge royalties and being made into stars overnight, the Hemsworths, Jackman... Joyner. And some stupid prick that's only directed sitcoms is going to tell me he needs more relatable emotion? What relatable emotion? I am giving him all I have with this character. (I rehearse walking onto the stage, walking behind the director with his big bald goose egg head, and I wrap a cord around his throat and squeeze. I rehearse pulling the cord taut until his shiny egg head begins to purple with asphyxiation, his vision deepening to red as blood vessels start bursting in his forehead... I rehearse...) I shake from my reverie and look down at the script. It's bent in half, worn from repeated thumbing and parsing the pages, as if any amount of my folding the page and peering between it's lines could provide me motivation or inspiration. I just wanted...
I wanted Array to come back. Distracted, I look across the trailer, at a makeup mirror set against a wall, and I see my reflection. As if it's in a dream, I see the other man looking at me in the mirror, his ghost. She left me. The one I gave everything to... she left me. And she is going for him. I know she is.
I absently rub the fading scars where I'd required stitches, after taking a glass vase to the face. Love can hurt.
Is she going back to him because I began reminding her of the man she used to have?
That question was straining our relationship from jump street. And it didn't help that he fucking kept showing up at our apartment, trying to talk with her. Maybe that's a trait I need to learn from him - persistence, perserverence, an unshakeable belief that no matter what gets thrown in my way, things will work out for me in the end because of who I am. That's the Ky - the Tyler Zane way. Yes. And that, too, made me so angry, and so maybe Array was right that she didn't like who I was becoming... but she should have liked it, she should have loved it, resonated with it, fallen deeper into the well for it, because his insistence and her continued connection, even when I tried to make it stop, was pushing me towards that anger. In many ways, it is because of them that I was starting to get the character, and get what I was supposed to do.
(I rehearse finding them together in bed I rehearse him standing up, saying something unbearably cocky I rehearse, in the palace of my mind the tableau that comes with me unleashing everything into a furious, overwhelming show of rage, I rehearse knowing exactly how he feels at the point of contact between fist and flesh, I rehearse feeling like a god with the power to make men fall, I rehearse all of this as I become him, in the palace of my mind, it all becomes so clear, I attack him, we fight, I use what I have learned and practiced from him and I BECOME him)
I connect my squirrelly, un-Alastair-like behaviors in the months of the shoot and I realize Jessie had a point. Array had a point. I was becoming a piece of shit. His flavor. I lost myself in him.
Well, Array loves him. And she never loved me. She loved me in that suit. She loved me when I put on tights, gelled up my hair, wore a costumed cosplay overcoat patterned after a video game character and I spoke angry, barking words about other people, calling them inferior in front of a camera.
I pick up the stitched costume Jessie was working on, letting my fingers feel the filigree, the inlay, the seams. I can give Array that. I can give her someone she very much would want. (I rehearse showing up to her OUR her apartment, wearing the tights under my coat, and I feel SO MUCH LIKE HIM, and when she opens the door, she'll have the biggest smile when she sees him, first reaction speaks the truest, and then I'll give her the man she loves, the angry man, the dark man)
I will give her the dark man I have been transforming myself into. Disappearing into the role.
I pick up the script, deliriously happy, smiling even. I look at this scene we're supposed to be filming. Tyler Zane is forced to tag team with his enemy, Angel Gerardo, a cocky, Hollywood pretty boy, weeks after the two of them had a match where my character and Angel Gerardo had a falling out due to an impasse over both of their egos. So they dislike each other, each man thinks they should be the top dog in this promotion, Angel Gerardo accuses my character constantly of getting favoritism and things handed to him and that makes me... what? What would be my mindset? What would be my motivation? Well, ego, of course, it's clear as day everything is about the character's easily scuffed ego. The character doesn't even see it as a weakness, he acknowledges in his daily life that everything he does is about boosting his ego. But being forced to team up with a man who claims that he didn't deserve what he got? That would drive him crazy, right?
And then there's the opponents in the script. Big, hulking, brute force, monosyllabic monster guy named Destructocon. The type of juggernaut that in the past ran through the entire lower half of the roster, looking impressively dominant, looked like a force that nobody could derail in his rise to the top. It would have been how you build the antagonist of a massive third-act battle, if not for the fact that he had been sufficiently weakened, his aura and mystique chipped away every single time he had fallen short of what he should have been, every time he lost out on a signature win or a title he should have claimed. Now Destructocon is just the back half of a tag team, who hadn't been seen in action in months. All the air had gone out of Destructocon by this point in the script, and he is nothing more than a fucking henchman. Ha. Easy. And his partner, Cloudy. My character would never give Cloudy any sort of respect or props. Cloudy is the type of man that's been in this federation for 20 years, and never hesitates to tell everyone in every scene he's in what amazing, wonderful things he'd done back in 2003. But the few times my character had dealt with Cloudy, the piece of shit had put in a weak effort, and ensured that their team lost, because he couldn't handle it. He couldn't handle my character outshining him. It was why in the first act of the movie Cloudy had assaulted my character from behind and stole his belt, trying to get some of the attention back onto him, but nobody ever really paid him any attention. Not when he stole my character's belt, not when he won a belt on his own in act two, not when he went around in the current act talking about the so impressive number of days he'd held on to the fucking belt.
I parse all of these disparate elements of this penultimate, climactic battle scene. I think about the character dynamics, the forced friendship, the bonds of mutual disdain for the other guys, the wanting to win. I try to think about what HE would think of all this. What, possibly, could the man in question, have in mind here, what would he think about being forced to do something like this? And it came to me, as I envisioned (I rehearse her OUR her apartment in Boston, her standing up to me, yelling at me) that it would fill him with hate. He would hate every single one of these men. Hate the idea of being forced to team with a man committed to telling people that he deserves something he never worked for. Hate the idea of the other two. Hate altogether. Yes. That is my determination. His world is run off hate.
I just realize as I pull the form-fitting spandex over my lower half that I'm getting an erection. My tumescent penis throbs sickly, and I look at myself sidelong in the mirror, admiring the tights I put on, admiring the man I am becoming.
From somewhere far away, I feel Alastair Joyner slipping into the back of my mind, pulled down into the dark, like he's being dragged away by a riptide. I am inhabiting, owning this skin, I am method acting in a way no one has ever done. I am living the life of the Game God. I'm not Tyler. I'm him. I am a narcissitic, angry, petulant, egostical troll, who cares nothing for anything but his own glory, and yet women flock to me.
(I rehearse strolling out of my trailer, grabbing my coat.)
I stroll out of my trailer, confidently grabbing my coat.
This was the roll I was born to play, because I have become it. I inhabit it. I don't ever really want to go back to being a third rate surfer also-ran who played a junkie once on a soap. Why the fuck would I. The bulge beats like a heartbeat, like the roots of a tree buried in the ground pulsing with life. I'm better.
A key grip touches me on the arm, and I flash him a dazzling smile. "Hey, Alastair, um, Joel wants to see ya," he says, nodding over to the directors chairs by the cameras where the director, a skinny little man with tight jeans and a leather jacket, is conversing with a fat, money man in a suit. It's Joel. Executive producer.
"Joel, Chaka," I address my audience like the star arriving at the show. "I'm ready to make magic happen. I know exactly what this role needs."
"Alastair," mumbles Chaka, the director, not meeting my eyes. The thin black man cuts his gaze to the executive producer. Joel looks at me gruffly, over a mouthful of a cigar.
"Jessie told us you assaulted her in the dressing trailer. Al, kid... that's the last straw. We're shutting down production, give this whole product a rethink, come back for new shoots in the spring. But you... you're out."
His ego flares in me, piqued. Out? OUT?!
(I rehearse...
I rehearse...)
I've shut my eyes now and yet, in my mind palace I can see the scene playing out like art house cinema. A chorus swells and an opera singer belts out a high note. Everyone moves in slow motion. People don't move or react until I'm wrapping my fingers around Joel's fat, bullfrog neck, his ugly, dark eyes bulging out of his head. My dick is standing straight at attention, as I am fully into the role, fully knowing what it is to live in his head.
I open my eyes, and Joel has taken his cigar out, is waving it in the air. " - should have rethought all of this when Array brought it to our attention... but you're a liability. A dangerous liability. And we think - hell, maybe when things went south with you kids, you lost your head a bit. Look, Al, you're a good kid. If you get some help, we can work with you later. You know us, Chaka has been raving about your work..." He nods to the director, the black man saying something under his breath, like Chaka hadn't been undermining my performance all this time.
My upper lip is sweaty. I still feel the tightness in my stomach, and I'm still feeling... it. You know. I just nod to Joel. I say, quietly, "I appreciate that."
"Don't make us have to escort you off the set, huh?" the director says to me, and Joel raises his eyebrows.
I hang my head. This is a setback. But while the God of Game gets set back, he always bounces back.
I walk myself off the set, running that thought over and over again in my mind. The God of Game, arrogant, shitheaded, filled with rage, as he is. But he always comes back from getting knocked down. Getting put in untenable situations. Being partnered with the wrong person. Being disrespected.
He gets what he wants.
Alastair knew that. He saw it first hand, the God of Game had continued to chase Array, to come to her, begging for one more chance, even when his life was falling apart around his ears. Even when professionally he had gotten the worst news of his life, he always tried to cling to Array. She was his lifeline, his person, his anchor in times of his darkest of hearts. That was, I know now, exactly why the God of Game would always try to find her. Despite it all, that was the power love gave him.
And that's why the God of Game had his next move.
But you know, sometimes, love can hurt. One person, two people, or sometimes, it can hurt a lot of people, when it's all said and done.
Literally, mate. Still got stitches in my face from it going sour.
And I'm trying to run my lines and focus on getting this movie in the can. As I sit on my little easy chair, running over this climactic monologue and giving it my full attention, I can feel myself time slipping. It's almost like what the subject of my focus does in those stupid little student films he does in his spare time. "Promos", he calls them. I call them indulgent, overly long wankfests. But then, what do I know?
My name is Alastair Joyner and the last three weeks of my life have fallen apart.
The producers have begun getting impatient with re-shoots and funding this money as it's turned into a headache. What began life as an unexpected, prestige sports drama has started falling all to bits. And there's so many fingers pointing where to blame. The script being written by an amateur, who was getting his petty revenge against his old roommate. The directors and executive producers not being able to keep it straight in their minds if this was going to be a big, set piece summer blockbuster or a measured, studied drama tucked away in the winter months and trying to get play at festivals. And then there was the public fall from grace of it's lead actor. In today's Twitter culture spose' I'm fucked just from jump of my name being linked to me flirting with underage girls. Me too, and all that. But weirder things have happened... right?
I put the script aside, impatiently, as the wardrobe girl Jessie is fidgeting around with my tights on the counter. "Got half an hour until you're needed on set, Alastair," she says, but she doesn't look at my face, and has the nervous energy of someone who doesn't want to be there. Don't we all?
"Jessie, can I ask you a question?" I say pensively, drumming my fingers lightly on the tray table next to my easy chair.
She freezes, but does look up to me. She gives me a servant's smile. "Yes, Alastair?"
"Why are we still doing this movie?"
"I don't follow you, Alastair." She's pleasant enough, but she keeps her distance. Like I'm some kind of monster. I can't stand it. I can't stand how everyone is looking at me, looking on pins and needles about me.
"This stupid Tyler Zane movie. It was in bad taste. But every single day I'm on set, I try to wrap my head around this character, get into being this... person, and it's just making me feel more lost. Who is he? Is he a black hat or a white hat?" There's so much I want to say, but can't, because even as I'm reaching, I'm just scratching the service. It isn't just that I can't quite get the character right, it feels like I'm losing myself trying. The web of contradictions baked into this character's nature are impossible to make sense of, his motivations only seem to be what's best for him in the moment, and the more I try to be him, the more lost I become. I'm Alastair fucking Joyner. I did two series on Straya's second highest rated daytime program and I was praised for my work bringing Greg's character arc to a satisfying conclusion on series 2 of Paradise Island. I should be nailing this.
But I can't get my head around who I'm supposed to be.
Because who I'm supposed to be makes no sense. Because who I'm supposed to be is a man who pushes everyone away, who loves nothing. But... but the real Array, she was the one who pushed me out, when I was trying to keep her close. I was trying to be a better man to her than he ever was, and I... she... I don't understand.
Jessie can sense the misery on my face, and she comes around the counter. She stands, aloof and poised, but closer to me. She can feel that I need answers. "Alastair... you are a gifted person, and you have a really kind heart. But - ohhh, can I speak... freely?" I wave my hand blithely, motioning she can do whatever. "I fear that, you're trying too hard to fit into this mold of what the, um, Tyler Zane, character is supposed to be. And you're losing yourself in it."
"That's ridiculous," I snorted, and I looked at her like she had two heads, "I played an addict on series three of Paradise Island, and ya don't see me reaching for needles, do you? I know not to go bleedin' native." She pursed her lips, and didn't want to look at me again, like someone trying to avoid giving the talk. I just wanted it straight.
Gods truth was, though, what she was saying made a lick of sense, but I didn't know how I could differentiate it. I was always getting a bleedy fuckwit "Cut!" from the director, who was forever giving me his snippy little "notes" on what he thinks Tyler Zane would say better in the heat of some particular moment, say when he was spouting off three paragraphs worth of dialogue running down a wrestler's past and calling em a drongo. It made no sense to me how he could sit through marking all that drivel down, let alone who would want to listen to it.
"I just think, you know - you don't want to get so into it that it becomes... intense..." Jessie hemmed and hawed. And I, charming devil that I am, reached into my bag of calm. Ya know, flash her those big white pearlies, Allie, make her swoon at the sight of the Australian sun. Girls have always turned heads, ever since I started doing modelling shoots in catalogues. I touched her should, like a pal. To my surprise, she flinched away.
"Is that why Array left the hero, in this version of the story? 'Cause he got too... intense?" My voice was cracking, like ice, in her ear.
Jessie couldn't speak, and I felt the urge to grab her and shove her. I hated how she looked at me. It was the same way Array looked at me back in Boston. All those nights in our apartments, when it was down time between my shoots and her play rehearsals, should have been good times, should have been just me and my girl. But she said that she didn't like who I was becoming. Well, guess what. It had been this role, and trying to probe the right mindset to say these... awful words. It kindled something in me. It made me angrier. (Hey. Yes. That's always what connects me to this character. The anger. It's always there, simmering under the surface. How does he do it?) Array had looked at me, just like Jessie was looking at me now. (No, she wasn't, Array had stood up, get your set dressing right...)
"Alastair," she says, her voice tight, "Please let go of my arm, you are making me very afraid."
My inspiration is infamous for letting his demons out in these moments of indulging his darkest whims. Maybe I could... practice it. I stage the shot in my mind, walk through the rehearsal. (This scene is going to be raw and gripping, I want to see real emotion between the two of you when you hit her... and... take us there.) And rehearse my speech, not knowing where Jessie was after I left my trailer. (Why, no, as a matter of fact... haven't seen the girl... You know, isn't Jessie the one a bit on the heavy side? Maybe she's down in catering... Ha, ha, ha...)
"Alastair." Jessie says, breaking my rehearsal. "You are making me very afraid. And you are hurting me."
"Sorry, love." I give her a big, toothy grin, deciding to give the rehearsal another take. "I didn't mean it, honest."
She rubs her tricep, which has deepening marks on it, and doesn't meet my eyes. She leaves her sewing implements behind on the counter next to my tights. "Twenty minutes until bell," she mumbles, and gets out of that trailer as fast as she can.
Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to think about my next shot. Twenty minutes insight into the mind of Tyler. I just want it to be good. I want it to mean something. I want... to stop getting notes about acting more like what the director feels like I should be.
This was going to be my big break in America, God dammit. After all these Aussie imports coming to these shores and bam, getting huge royalties and being made into stars overnight, the Hemsworths, Jackman... Joyner. And some stupid prick that's only directed sitcoms is going to tell me he needs more relatable emotion? What relatable emotion? I am giving him all I have with this character. (I rehearse walking onto the stage, walking behind the director with his big bald goose egg head, and I wrap a cord around his throat and squeeze. I rehearse pulling the cord taut until his shiny egg head begins to purple with asphyxiation, his vision deepening to red as blood vessels start bursting in his forehead... I rehearse...) I shake from my reverie and look down at the script. It's bent in half, worn from repeated thumbing and parsing the pages, as if any amount of my folding the page and peering between it's lines could provide me motivation or inspiration. I just wanted...
I wanted Array to come back. Distracted, I look across the trailer, at a makeup mirror set against a wall, and I see my reflection. As if it's in a dream, I see the other man looking at me in the mirror, his ghost. She left me. The one I gave everything to... she left me. And she is going for him. I know she is.
I absently rub the fading scars where I'd required stitches, after taking a glass vase to the face. Love can hurt.
Is she going back to him because I began reminding her of the man she used to have?
That question was straining our relationship from jump street. And it didn't help that he fucking kept showing up at our apartment, trying to talk with her. Maybe that's a trait I need to learn from him - persistence, perserverence, an unshakeable belief that no matter what gets thrown in my way, things will work out for me in the end because of who I am. That's the Ky - the Tyler Zane way. Yes. And that, too, made me so angry, and so maybe Array was right that she didn't like who I was becoming... but she should have liked it, she should have loved it, resonated with it, fallen deeper into the well for it, because his insistence and her continued connection, even when I tried to make it stop, was pushing me towards that anger. In many ways, it is because of them that I was starting to get the character, and get what I was supposed to do.
(I rehearse finding them together in bed I rehearse him standing up, saying something unbearably cocky I rehearse, in the palace of my mind the tableau that comes with me unleashing everything into a furious, overwhelming show of rage, I rehearse knowing exactly how he feels at the point of contact between fist and flesh, I rehearse feeling like a god with the power to make men fall, I rehearse all of this as I become him, in the palace of my mind, it all becomes so clear, I attack him, we fight, I use what I have learned and practiced from him and I BECOME him)
I connect my squirrelly, un-Alastair-like behaviors in the months of the shoot and I realize Jessie had a point. Array had a point. I was becoming a piece of shit. His flavor. I lost myself in him.
Well, Array loves him. And she never loved me. She loved me in that suit. She loved me when I put on tights, gelled up my hair, wore a costumed cosplay overcoat patterned after a video game character and I spoke angry, barking words about other people, calling them inferior in front of a camera.
I pick up the stitched costume Jessie was working on, letting my fingers feel the filigree, the inlay, the seams. I can give Array that. I can give her someone she very much would want. (I rehearse showing up to her OUR her apartment, wearing the tights under my coat, and I feel SO MUCH LIKE HIM, and when she opens the door, she'll have the biggest smile when she sees him, first reaction speaks the truest, and then I'll give her the man she loves, the angry man, the dark man)
I will give her the dark man I have been transforming myself into. Disappearing into the role.
I pick up the script, deliriously happy, smiling even. I look at this scene we're supposed to be filming. Tyler Zane is forced to tag team with his enemy, Angel Gerardo, a cocky, Hollywood pretty boy, weeks after the two of them had a match where my character and Angel Gerardo had a falling out due to an impasse over both of their egos. So they dislike each other, each man thinks they should be the top dog in this promotion, Angel Gerardo accuses my character constantly of getting favoritism and things handed to him and that makes me... what? What would be my mindset? What would be my motivation? Well, ego, of course, it's clear as day everything is about the character's easily scuffed ego. The character doesn't even see it as a weakness, he acknowledges in his daily life that everything he does is about boosting his ego. But being forced to team up with a man who claims that he didn't deserve what he got? That would drive him crazy, right?
And then there's the opponents in the script. Big, hulking, brute force, monosyllabic monster guy named Destructocon. The type of juggernaut that in the past ran through the entire lower half of the roster, looking impressively dominant, looked like a force that nobody could derail in his rise to the top. It would have been how you build the antagonist of a massive third-act battle, if not for the fact that he had been sufficiently weakened, his aura and mystique chipped away every single time he had fallen short of what he should have been, every time he lost out on a signature win or a title he should have claimed. Now Destructocon is just the back half of a tag team, who hadn't been seen in action in months. All the air had gone out of Destructocon by this point in the script, and he is nothing more than a fucking henchman. Ha. Easy. And his partner, Cloudy. My character would never give Cloudy any sort of respect or props. Cloudy is the type of man that's been in this federation for 20 years, and never hesitates to tell everyone in every scene he's in what amazing, wonderful things he'd done back in 2003. But the few times my character had dealt with Cloudy, the piece of shit had put in a weak effort, and ensured that their team lost, because he couldn't handle it. He couldn't handle my character outshining him. It was why in the first act of the movie Cloudy had assaulted my character from behind and stole his belt, trying to get some of the attention back onto him, but nobody ever really paid him any attention. Not when he stole my character's belt, not when he won a belt on his own in act two, not when he went around in the current act talking about the so impressive number of days he'd held on to the fucking belt.
I parse all of these disparate elements of this penultimate, climactic battle scene. I think about the character dynamics, the forced friendship, the bonds of mutual disdain for the other guys, the wanting to win. I try to think about what HE would think of all this. What, possibly, could the man in question, have in mind here, what would he think about being forced to do something like this? And it came to me, as I envisioned (I rehearse her OUR her apartment in Boston, her standing up to me, yelling at me) that it would fill him with hate. He would hate every single one of these men. Hate the idea of being forced to team with a man committed to telling people that he deserves something he never worked for. Hate the idea of the other two. Hate altogether. Yes. That is my determination. His world is run off hate.
I just realize as I pull the form-fitting spandex over my lower half that I'm getting an erection. My tumescent penis throbs sickly, and I look at myself sidelong in the mirror, admiring the tights I put on, admiring the man I am becoming.
From somewhere far away, I feel Alastair Joyner slipping into the back of my mind, pulled down into the dark, like he's being dragged away by a riptide. I am inhabiting, owning this skin, I am method acting in a way no one has ever done. I am living the life of the Game God. I'm not Tyler. I'm him. I am a narcissitic, angry, petulant, egostical troll, who cares nothing for anything but his own glory, and yet women flock to me.
(I rehearse strolling out of my trailer, grabbing my coat.)
I stroll out of my trailer, confidently grabbing my coat.
This was the roll I was born to play, because I have become it. I inhabit it. I don't ever really want to go back to being a third rate surfer also-ran who played a junkie once on a soap. Why the fuck would I. The bulge beats like a heartbeat, like the roots of a tree buried in the ground pulsing with life. I'm better.
A key grip touches me on the arm, and I flash him a dazzling smile. "Hey, Alastair, um, Joel wants to see ya," he says, nodding over to the directors chairs by the cameras where the director, a skinny little man with tight jeans and a leather jacket, is conversing with a fat, money man in a suit. It's Joel. Executive producer.
"Joel, Chaka," I address my audience like the star arriving at the show. "I'm ready to make magic happen. I know exactly what this role needs."
"Alastair," mumbles Chaka, the director, not meeting my eyes. The thin black man cuts his gaze to the executive producer. Joel looks at me gruffly, over a mouthful of a cigar.
"Jessie told us you assaulted her in the dressing trailer. Al, kid... that's the last straw. We're shutting down production, give this whole product a rethink, come back for new shoots in the spring. But you... you're out."
His ego flares in me, piqued. Out? OUT?!
(I rehearse...
I rehearse...)
I've shut my eyes now and yet, in my mind palace I can see the scene playing out like art house cinema. A chorus swells and an opera singer belts out a high note. Everyone moves in slow motion. People don't move or react until I'm wrapping my fingers around Joel's fat, bullfrog neck, his ugly, dark eyes bulging out of his head. My dick is standing straight at attention, as I am fully into the role, fully knowing what it is to live in his head.
I open my eyes, and Joel has taken his cigar out, is waving it in the air. " - should have rethought all of this when Array brought it to our attention... but you're a liability. A dangerous liability. And we think - hell, maybe when things went south with you kids, you lost your head a bit. Look, Al, you're a good kid. If you get some help, we can work with you later. You know us, Chaka has been raving about your work..." He nods to the director, the black man saying something under his breath, like Chaka hadn't been undermining my performance all this time.
My upper lip is sweaty. I still feel the tightness in my stomach, and I'm still feeling... it. You know. I just nod to Joel. I say, quietly, "I appreciate that."
"Don't make us have to escort you off the set, huh?" the director says to me, and Joel raises his eyebrows.
I hang my head. This is a setback. But while the God of Game gets set back, he always bounces back.
I walk myself off the set, running that thought over and over again in my mind. The God of Game, arrogant, shitheaded, filled with rage, as he is. But he always comes back from getting knocked down. Getting put in untenable situations. Being partnered with the wrong person. Being disrespected.
He gets what he wants.
Alastair knew that. He saw it first hand, the God of Game had continued to chase Array, to come to her, begging for one more chance, even when his life was falling apart around his ears. Even when professionally he had gotten the worst news of his life, he always tried to cling to Array. She was his lifeline, his person, his anchor in times of his darkest of hearts. That was, I know now, exactly why the God of Game would always try to find her. Despite it all, that was the power love gave him.
And that's why the God of Game had his next move.
But you know, sometimes, love can hurt. One person, two people, or sometimes, it can hurt a lot of people, when it's all said and done.
